


Fascia

by eloquated



Series: Anatomy [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-The Final Problem, Sibling Incest, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-03 05:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16320269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquated/pseuds/eloquated
Summary: Fascia (n.):is a band or sheet of connective tissue beneath the skin that attaches, stabilizes, encloses, and separates muscles and other internal organs.Sometimes you didn’t need a Holmesian gift for deduction to know that you were standing on the edge of something awful.  Logically she knew that the unknown was more terrifying than whatever was under that industrial strength black plastic.Greg looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.





	1. Distal

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all my lovelies! 
> 
> I've been wanting to do something for Halloween, and this idea popped into my head. I have the first few chapters mostly done, (oh the editing, don't we love it?) and hopefully I'll have the whole thing finished and posted by the 31st.
> 
> It takes place at the end of The Final Problem, but is canon divergent.
> 
> Reviews are very welcome, I'd love to know what people are thinking, and what they'd like to see more of! xoxo

It wasn’t the first time the St. Bart’s Morgue had been commandeered by the men in black suits. They always arrived in twos; the first wave appearing with jackbooted efficiency, pushing open the doors like they were expecting something nefarious on the other side.  What they expected? Molly had never quite managed to figure that out, and they never bothered to look relieved or skeptical when they left.

The second wave was usually flanking the tall and immaculately dressed form of Mycroft Holmes.  This, she’d come to accept, was nothing personal-- after all, there were probably some rules and regulations about keeping the British Government himself safe.  So she’d sit and wait for the second wave to prowl around the room with their wary expressions until they’d decided that things were, in fact, safe.

Or as safe as any lab frequented by the Holmses could be.

But after everything that had happened the day before?  Molly wasn’t particularly thrilled to see either of them.  Not unless it was Sherlock, coming with a long and detailed explanation for  _ what the Hell _ he’d meant by that phone call.  It was abundantly obvious that something had gone terribly wrong on his end, and she was very short on answers.  Which she both felt entitled to, and sure she would never get.

So when the agents in their snappy black suits stormed into her lab, Molly rose to her feet and took those few seconds to try and think of a polite, but firm, way to tell Mr. Holmes (British Government or not) that this was really not a very good time.

In those few seconds, Molly realized that something was wrong.  Properly wrong. When it wasn’t Mycroft’s distinctively copper-toned head coming through the swinging doors, but Gregory Lestrade’s even more distinctive premature grey.  And from the worn expression, to the sallow grey cast of his skin, he looked like a man who was still in the process of dragging himself back up from Hell. 

“Molls…”  He started, but his voice caught on an unexpected snag that turned it rough and uncomfortable.  She didn’t need an explanation when the second wave arrived. 

The four of them were flanking a rolling gurney that rattled on the tiles, and Molly thought they reminded her more of pall bearers than agents.  Greg’s gaze slid away from her when she questioned him silently, fixed on a random grey scuff on the wall by the ticking clock. Anywhere, she realized belatedly, but at the zippered black body bag resting on the trolley.  Even the agents seemed to avoid the bag, their hands and bodies held away from the shiny black PVC like it was contagious.

They didn’t have masks, so it wasn’t a case for the Centre for Disease Control, but Molly had a sinking feeling that might be the only small mercy she’d be afforded.  “Greg?” She asked quietly, and was surprised by the wary tone in her own voice. The sound of his own name seemed to snap the DI from the trance he’d been in, a haunted look rushing across his face before he could force it back.

Sometimes you didn’t need a Holmesian gift for deduction to know that you were standing on the edge of something awful.  For a moment, Molly felt a little like she had at her first autopsy; rubbing her cold, clammy hands on the sides of her lab coat and hoping in vain that it would blot away the worst of the moisture.  Logically she knew that the unknown was more terrifying than whatever was under that industrial strength zipper, even if Greg looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.

It still took her a few extra minutes to gather up her courage.

Molly’s steps sounded uncomfortably gummy on the worn tiles, soft-soled and grippy, like the nurses wore on the wards upstairs; and her third step was punctuated by a sharp, “Here,” from the agent at the front left of the plain, metal gurney.  “No word of this is to leave this room,” the agent continued, and every word seemed to tug on his cracked, dry lips, “We’ll be waiting outside to receive your findings.” With a lurch he thrust out a sheaf of pages, all held in place with a heavy paper clip and crushed at the corners where he’d held them too tightly.

“You know an autopsy takes hours?”  Molly pointed out after a beat, working against the sick feeling that kept trying to crawl up the back of her throat, “And if you want a full analysis?  Some of my results won’t be ready for weeks. I’ll get you as much as I can, but there’s really no reason for you to wait.” And if she was being honest, trying to work with their solemn, blank expressions looming around her lab wasn’t going to make this any easier.  “I’m sure there’s contact details in here, I’ll be in touch.”

Molly rarely felt assertive, but really-- this was her morgue, and her work, and it would just be easier for everyone if they let her get on with it. Besides, the agents looked about as happy to be there as Molly was to host them. Which was to say, not in the slightest.  They weren’t the first people to be disturbed by the windowless room, with its’ institutional blue-grey tiles and scrubbed metal work surfaces, there was something sterile about it; a practicality that suited Molly, but tended to make some people’s skin crawl.

She wasn’t quite sure what they were expecting, crushed velvet and mahogany, with gas lamps sprouting from the walls?

Either way, the agents shuffled out of the room in double file, only too happy to get back to their familiar setting.  Spies and assassins were more comfortable for them, she thought, than the death that came after.

“Molls, you should know-”  Greg’s voice cut through the silence that began to creep back in as soon as the doors had swung closed behind the last black suited figure.  It was a thick, uncomfortable sound in his throat, and in the fifteen years of their friendship, Molly could only remember hearing it once.  _ “Why didn’t you tell me he was alive?” _  She suppressed a shudder at the memory.  

With leaden steps, he took up a place by her side, like some kind of bodyguard.  The implication was clear; he couldn’t bring himself to open the bag, and he couldn’t do the autopsy for her, but he’d damn well be there if she needed him.  “I know. I … It’s alright.” Only it wasn’t, not really, not even at all. Molly remembered what it had felt like when they’d laid ‘Sherlock’s’ body on the slab, she remembered every moment of that day in terrible, vivid colour.  

This simply didn’t feel the same.  But it was someone they knew. Someone important enough to need the full Official Secret routine, and given the strange call she’d gotten from Sherlock the day before?  Well, it could be John, but she doubted it. Even from the outside, the shape in the bag was simply too long; a solid outline of broad shoulders and long bones beneath the rubberized black plastic.  

Molly’s hand didn’t shake as she reached for the zipper, a disconnected trickle of ice winding down her spine.  Dread, she identified, and pushed that thought away, too. The tab on the zipper was cold to the touch and textured for grip, a broad, solid piece of metal that sent minute vibrations up through her arm as she drew it down.  

Short auburn hair, thinning at the crown and threaded with copper and salt.  His once pale complexion now turned waxy and grey beneath the smattering of cinnamon coloured freckles scattered across the bridge of a Patrician nose.  He was blue lipped beneath the banks of fluorescent lights, and Molly noted with a terrible lurch that someone had closed his eyes. 

Greg’s hand settled on her shoulder, but Molly couldn’t bring herself to tear her eyes away.  It wasn’t possible, shrieked her thoughts, echoing in the sudden, shocked blankness of her mind.  Echoes that radiated down to the hollow of her chest, searching for an exit. Searching for the words to deny what she could see right in front of her.  

Mycroft Holmes was dead.


	2. Medial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Greg feels guilty, and someone unexpected arrives at the St. Barts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An early morning chapter, since I had some time to edit before I toddle off to be a productive adult (what a terrifying thought!)
> 
> I hope everyone's enjoying this so far!

Contrary to popular media, an autopsy is more than just a dramatic, Y-shaped incision held together with heavy black football stitches.  There was evidence to collect, and measurements to be made; everything needed to be documented and weighed, each sample and observation noted down neatly for the next person that might need that information.

“You shouldn’t have to do this, Molls.”  She heared Greg’s low voice muttering just behind her right ear, “But apparently there’s some  _ procedure  _ in place for if this happened.”  He said the word like it had personally offended him; a lot of faceless bureaucrats standing in the way of him protecting one of his people.  He hadn’t managed to save the man in front of them, and the failure of it burned in his guts-- and now they wanted him to shut up, do his job, no matter that the man in the body bag was someone he knew.  Someone he could have gone for a drink with.

Well, maybe not that.  Mycroft Holmes wasn’t exactly in his close social circle.  But they’d known each other for a decade, ever since Sherlock had--

“Does he know?”  Molly asked when the silence had dragged on too painfully long, “Sherlock, I mean.”  Her voice sounded hushed to her own ears, small and displaced by the enormity of what she was looking at.  If every death caused ripples out through the lives it had touched, this one would cause tidal waves. And Sherlock had only just cleaned up, again.  Thinking about the future wouldn’t make the next few hours any easier, but at least it was some kind of distraction.

Greg swallowed hard, not sure if he was going to be sick or not, and glanced around for the wastebasket anyway.  “No.. Should do. I would have done, but the higher ups got hold of me first. He’s been through Hell tonight, not that anyone’s told me much.  I was called out to the scene, and briefed on the way. They don’t want anyone knowing anything until you’ve told them how he died.”

Molly could hear the rasp in his voice, but Greg Lestrade had never been the crying type.  She listened as she quietly pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and threaded her fingers together to make sure they fit properly.  Procedure. It was part of her work as well, but the routine process of sliding the body bag onto the morgue slab (it sounded obscene in a way she’d never really considered before) didn’t offer much comfort.  Even with Greg’s help the deadweight was literally dead weight, solid with the reminder that a few hours ago he had been alive.

“I panicked, Molls.  He asked if I’d talked to his brother, and you know what’s he’s like.  Would have figured it out in half a second if I hesitated, so I just said the first thing that came to mind.  I told him he was fine, and Sherlock asked me to look in on him. Said he wasn’t as strong as he thought he was.   _ Christ... _ ”

With the squeak of PVC on stainless steel they managed to shuffle the body bag to the table, the jointed tissues already seized stiff with rigor mortis.  He was cold to the touch as Molly carefully slid her gloved hand under the rigid right shoulder and lifted. The bones always felt so substantial, even after death and decay, they would endure to mark his vacated place in the world. Between the two of them they worked the bag off his shoulders, one at a time, and carefully pulled it out from under him.

It would need to go to their forensics department if it was suspected foul play, and Molly carefully zipped it back up to contain any trace evidence that might have fallen from the body.  From  _ Mycroft _ .  Molly wasn’t afraid of death, or even the autopsy she’d been demanded to perform; there was nothing she could do that would hurt him now.

But Greg looked like he was going to be sick, and God only knew what would happen when Sherlock discovered the truth.

“We’ll make sure he’s ok.”  She promised when the bag had been rolled and set aside.  Molly’s small frame was warm through the heavy drape of her white coat when she leaned against Greg’s side, offering the comfort she needed, too.  She only wished she sounded more confident than she felt, because how on Earth were they going to keep Sherlock safe? They’d never managed it before, why did they think they could now?

“Go home, Greg.  Really, there’s nothing else you can do for him, and you don’t need to see this part.”  Part of her hoped it would be easier if he wasn’t there. There were things that had to be done, and Molly knew she could get through it if she could see him as just a body.  A collection of organs and tissues, instead of the man that had taken her for dinner on the nights when their shared secret, that Sherlock had been alive, had grown too heavy on her shoulders.  

If she fell apart now, Molly wasn’t sure she would be able to drag herself back together.  She had to keep pushing forward, because they needed to know how he had died; and she could find that.

She just had to outrun her grief for a little longer.

“Are you sure?  I could stick around, it’s no trouble.”  Greg’s arm settled around her shoulders, and Molly wasn’t quite sure which of them he was comforting.  He smelled of cold air and cigarette smoke, acrid and organic against the sterile tang of the morgue, and Molly breathed in the familiar combination.  Greg was still a head taller, like he had been more than a decade before, when they’d both been much younger, and much more hopeful. ”I’m sure. And you’re only a few blocks away.  I’ll call you if it.. Gets to be too much. But the sooner I get started, the sooner I’m done.”

He didn’t look convinced, but with a nod, Greg allowed himself to chivvied out to his car.  There would be a stiff drink and a cold bed waiting for him at home, but it seemed selfish to complain too much.  It was the same thing waiting for all of them (with, or without, the scotch).

The silence that remained when he’d gone was a tangible thing, it pressed against her ear drums and leaned against her chest, trying to displace all the air in the room.  “Alright, then.” Molly said, more to herself than anything, her spine straightening as she looked at the body laid out on her table. It helped, sometimes, talking to fill the quiet that always seemed deeper in the morgue; made her feel a little braver, she’d always thought.

“We’re going to have to get all your nice suit off and bagged up for the Yard.  But you probably already knew that, this wouldn’t be a surprise. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful with it.”

Molly had never been quite able to explain how it felt; but it was certainly a feeling, and not a sound.  It made her skin prickle with goosebumps, the hair stand on the back of her neck, and if she had to describe it?  It was a little like someone with very, very cold breath breathing down her collar. And for all the times it had happened, it never got any easier.

With a slow exhale of her own, clouding briefly white in the air as it left her lips, Molly turned to face the figure that had arrived, and was now leaning slightly against her counter.  He was faded, almost translucent at the edges, like a shadow that had been painted with entirely the wrong palette. Almost colourless under the bright industrial lights that didn’t seem quite able to illuminate him properly.  

He looked confused.  Very, confused.

“Mr. Holmes…”  Molly offered him a small smile, rueful and a little sympathetic, “Mycroft.  I suppose I should have known you’d be here.”


	3. Superior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mycroft finds himself facing the strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, everyone (or whatever day it is when you read this)!
> 
> I'm hoping to get rolling with my revisions today, as I hide inside from the cold, so we'll see what happens!

Death was never glamorous, never beautiful, no matter how the glossy reels of Hollywood tried to paint it.  They prettied it up, and made a human’s last moments seem like a poignant singular instance. The culmination of their life wrapped up in a neat, tidy box with people weeping over them.  Molly had always thought it was a bit of a band-aid solution to the real problem:

Death came to them all in the end.  It didn’t matter how brilliant you were (though she supposed that eventually, with enough smarts you could conceivably create yourself some kind of Lazarus Machine, with all of the prerequisite remorse that fiction promised would follow.  If you were keen on such a thing). Or how kind. It was the great equalizer at the end of long lives, and tragically cut short ones

Now it had come for Mycroft, and he didn’t seem to have any idea how to process that information.

“I’d offer you a cup of tea, but... it’s not particularly useful for you anymore.”  Molly apologized gently, her fingers falling away from the hand molded leather shoes he’d chosen to wear that day; the ones still worn by his corpse, and not the misty replica he was still wearing.  From a few feet away, Mycroft grimaced, his gaze fixed on the macabre sight of his own body laid out on the slab.

A twist of empathy ached in her chest, trying to push the oxygen aside to made way for grief.  “I can cover it up, if you like.” She ventured, already reaching for the shot sheet folded at the end of the slab when he nodded.  

“You seem… rather unsurprised to see me.”  Mycroft’s voice sounded jarringly real; they always did at the beginning.  The fascia that connected them to life only just starting to fray and fail, but it wouldn’t last.  It never did. Molly shrugged faintly beneath the comforting weight of her lab coat, skinny shoulders lifting and dropping a bit too sharply, “I’m not.  Not really… should I be?” She asked, arching an eyebrow.

It was easier for both of them when the face on the table had been covered by the heavy, papery sheet.  

“I should think so…  I seem rather…” 

“It’s a morgue, there’s often dead people here. Usually, even.”

One corner of his mouth jumped reflexively, a smile that was more muscle memory than amusement.  Her bleak humour always seemed to go over better with the dead, and she’d never been quite sure if it was because there was something hardwired oddly in her, or because she simply had more practice amusing the dearly departed.  

It was the same experience that reminded her that this was still Mycroft, he wouldn’t want to be babied or condescended to; and so she let the silence hang in the air between them as he tried to work through the shock of his own death.  Quietly she padded around the lab, putting away the bits and beakers that always seemed to migrate into the corners of the room. She loaded the autoclave but didn’t set it to run because it was a great, noisy old thing and eventually, she knew, Mycroft would want to talk.

It didn’t take long, all things considered.

“This isn’t new for you.  This…” Mycroft’s voice didn’t so much break the silence as slither into it, changing the quality of the quiet with his unsteady sigh, “Talking to people after they’ve passed on.  I am.. Ah, dead?”

“No.  It’s not really new…”  Her nod confirmed his question,  “And no, before you ask, I don’t know why it happens. I’m not secretly a witch, or some kind of Lovecraftian scion of the Old Ones.”  Molly smiled when he looked vaguely embarrassed at the clarification, the corners of his mouth pinching in slightly. “It’s been like this all my life.  My parents are were two perfectly lovely, normal people from Hertfordshire, and my sibings are, too.. I really don’t know what happened, but I’ve always been able to do it.”  

“What does all this mean for me?”  

And that was it, wasn’t it?  The million dollar question that Molly had no good answers for.  It was different when it was someone you knew, someone whose loss you knew you’d grieve, too (someone you already were, even when they were standing right in front of you, in a manner of speaking).  With the random spirits that moved through the morgue, some of them already unravelling away from life, their passing was brief. But all Molly really wanted to do was grap her arms around his shoulders and tell him it would be alright.

Thankfully, that was a mistake you only tried once.  It was easier to stay apart than to watch her fingers slide through his intangibility.  

“I don’t know.  What comes after, at least.  Sometimes people are just holding on so tightly when they die that it.. Takes.. A bit longer.”  The rubber tips on Molly’s stool squeaked against the tiles, the legs rattling on the slightly uneven floor when she sat down.  “But it never lasts. You’re not going to be trapped here. It’s… well, a little more like a summing up. Making your peace before you--”  Her voice caught, and Molly didn’t bother finishing the sentence. There didn’t seem to be much point when it was obvious how it ended.

“The proverbial unfinished business.  But I’m not entirely sure what happened; it’s all rather vague.  I was with.. My brother. And Dr. Watson. And there was something about-- _ oh Lord. _ ”

Molly watched as the comforting, cotton wool wrapping of his confusion was brutally sheared away by his clearing memories, and Mycroft paled over even more than she’d thought possible. In the corner he looked a sickly grey, one graceful hand (just like his brother’s, she noted distractedy) pressed to his mouth.  Her own heart felt like it was crammed into her throat, beating away with a nauseating speed.

The body on the slab was still just behind her, she could reach out and rest a hand on his shoulder.  He would be cold and tangible, and Molly’s insides contracted back against her spine like they could escape the situation.  Or put more space between them, and what she knew she would have to do. People were waiting for her findings, and--

“I think I’m going to … take a moment.  You may continue with your work, of course, but I would prefer not to see it myself.”  

Molly would be lying if she didn’t admit that she’d wondered what Mycroft Holmes looked like beneath his layers of bespoke tailoring; modern armor in silk and windowpane check, worn to intimidate.  And it worked. 

But there was no window dressing that could hide the quiet desolation on his face.  It was the cruelest joke that the dead could grieve and feel pain; tethered to the living world for a few extra hours by something stronger than their willpower alone.

With careful hands she unfasted the laces on his shoes, and the blue-grey silk tie already pulled loose around his neck.  Every item of his armor stripped away and neatly folded, the articles of his life inventoried and stowed away in clear plastic bags.  Without it, he seemed diminished; a sheet pulled up to his waist, and every stretch mark and scar picked out callously by the bright banks of overhead lights.  A middle aged man, like any of the thousand others that had come under her hands.

“I’ve promised my brain to the Royal Society, if you wouldn’t mind.”  Mycroft said from the far side of the room, his body angled to avoid the sight of his own body.  

More than the cutting or sampling, it was this ritual disrobing that felt demeaning.  The fact that it was a necessary evil didn’t, in fact, make it any easier to swallow. From the corner of his eye he caught the glint of a scalpel in Molly’s blue-gloved hand, reflecting the lights above their heads.  And for an irrational moment, Mycroft wondered if he would be able to feel the slice.

Bodies bleed very little.  Without a pulse, severed veins dripped their cold, jellied contents onto the metal table.  It smudged Molly’s hands as she worked, measuring and weighing the once vital parts of himself.  

It could have been a stranger’s body, he thought-- he didn’t feel a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was wondering, I have an idea for a short fic with Molly and Jim Moriarty, but are people interested in reading fic without romance? Weigh in, I'd love to know what you think about gen fic, or this fic!


	4. Proximal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock knows something is wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A second chapter today, and the arrival of our favourite Consulting Detective!

_ You’ve reached the voicemail of Mycroft Holmes, please leave your name and number after the tone.” _

It’s the 53rd call in the last six hours, and Sherlock’s heart is collapsing because there is something  wrong .  He can feel it like he’s slowly bleeding out from a wound he can’t find, and every time Mycroft doesn’t answer his phone, Sherlock searched for the entry wound because there has to be something he’s missed.

They’d made an art of saying things they shouldn’t (keeping up a public image for the goldfish that didn’t need to know better), but Mycroft always answered his phone when Sherlock needed him.  He hadn’t seen him since they’d been rescued from the crumbling remains of their family home, and even Lestrade had seemed… tense. Unaccountably tense. 

John had told him it was just his imagination; they’d been through Hell and it was probably shock and trauma.  Lestrade had said that Mycroft was fine, so he must be. 

Wait for morning, he’d advised logically, and gone to bed himself.

It was easy for him to say, and Sherlock had had to swallow back the bitter knot of resentment in his throat.  John had been able to hold Rosie to his chest and felt the living warmth of her breath against his neck. He was curled up in his own bed, cradling his little girl, and John would think it was ridiculous if he knew how many messages Sherlock had  _ almost _ left for his brother.  

Sherlock perched on the edge of the couch in John’s tidy living room, his heart throbbing in his guts as he dialed the number again.  He’d already slipped out once, but Mycroft’s house was dark and empty, still waiting for him to return. Even his office at the Diogenes had been vacant at that hour, and where the Hell was his brother?  Sherlock had given up trying to convince himself that this would be the last time he called.

It was like being four again.  His brother had been stuck behind his bedroom door and Sherlock hadn’t understood what measles were, or why Mycroft couldn’t come explain it to him.  He’d wanted to scream because he didn’t care if he got sick, too-- he wanted his brother to tell him that it was alright, and they’d play together soon.  He would be on his best behaviour, he’d promised, and Sherlock had pleaded with his mother until his frustration had given way to anger and tears.

When his Uncle Alphonse had come to fetch him, he’d explained that Mycroft needed quiet to recover.  That there could be  _ complications _ , and if anything were to happen…?  Would it be Sherlock’s fault? Had he made too much noise?  Was the damage already done, and those vague  _ complications  _ we already coming, even though he’d been sent away?

It was the longest drive of his young life, huddled under his cousin Victor’s arm as the slightly older boy whispered reassurances.  And for a moment, despite the fact that they hadn’t been close in years, Sherlock was gripped with the irrational desire to call his cousin.  To hear him say that of course Mycroft was fine. He was always fine. He was  _ Mycroft _ .  

His Aunt Seraphina had been furious when she’d found out.  But she’d been gone for years now, and besides, she would only call his father, and even Sherlock knew he had to keep this from his parents.  

John didn’t understand these things.  He’d seen the bickering and the competition, the snide, snapped words that neither of them really meant-- and taken them at face value.  He didn’t see the brother that had sat with him during the hideousness of his withdrawal, combing cold fingers through Sherlock’s hair to ground him against the tremors that threatened to break him.

He couldn’t comprehend of their childhood.  Mycroft explaining the wondrous impossibility of a bee’s wings; or gently talking down his confused little brother when school was intolerable and hateful and the other students even moreso.  John didn’t see any of these things, because it was against  _ their rules _ .

And the Holmes brothers had never acknowledged any rules but the ones they created.

Now Sherlock needed him, and his brother wasn’t answering the phone.  He needed the warm weight of Mycroft’s arms around his waist, and the tickling puff of breath against the crown of his head.  The brother he’d mocked on his 40th birthday and spoiled that night with kisses for every year since his own birth-- because what did the seven before that even matter?

If he was hurt, Sherlock should be sitting at his bedside; he wasn’t 16 anymore, being kept in the dark after Mycroft’s accident in the field.  But there were a dozen hospitals in the city, and bloody Anthea had to know where his brother was, but Sherlock had tried her as well...

No answer.

Eventually he couldn’t sit there any longer, fractious and fitful, all sharp edges beneath his skin.  He was the walking wounded, bleeding out from a wound he couldn’t see.

John was the wrong kind of doctor for this.

He could only hope Molly would speak to him after everything that had happened.


	5. Lateral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mycroft remembers, and Molly lends an ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend! 
> 
> Only two more chapters left after this, and I have to say, it certainly went a different path than I'd expected, don't you love it when your characters decide to take you on a merry goose chase? xoxo

There were sounds that even Mycroft Holmes found difficult to ignore.  The rustle of fine fabric, and the slow sigh of a zipper seemed strangely out of place in the sterile lab, the sounds reverberating from the smooth tiled walls.  Already, the connective tissue that had bound him to his mortal transport had frayed and come untethered, and now it was simply a matter of time before the rest of his spirit followed suit.

Mycroft had never truly considered what would happen to him after his death.  

He had made provisions for his work, his parents, his Sherlock; had crafted protocols to ensure the world would keep running when he had left it.  Truthfully, he had seen death as the end. He had never feared for a soul he hadn’t believed existed, or dreaded the reckoning at the end of his own days.  

Even now, when he could look to the side and see the grim outline of his own corpse, that hadn’t particularly changed.  His understanding of death had expanded, but the fundamentals were the same. 

He didn’t fear for himself.  Not even now. But Sherlock?  _ Oh _ … 

Mycroft Holmes wasn’t waiting for an angel to guide him to the other side, and he certainly wasn’t spending his last hours praying for forgiveness for sins he hadn’t regretted in life.  If this was what came beyond death, than there was a chance for them still. If all this pain was temporary, he could see his brother again.

Of course, that was all hinging on a very nebulous  _ if.   _ But beggars could hardly be choosy about the source of their comfort.

“You have a scar, on your shoulder.  It goes right through these freckles that look like that constellation…  Oh, what was it..?” Molly voice filtered into his quiet reflection, and Mycroft spared a faint smile for the distraction she offered.

“Lyra, I believe.  At least, according to my brother.  He was rather fond of the old myths, at one point.  As I’ve only seen it in reflection, I couldn’t say for certain.”  

From the side of the morgue slab, Molly looked over her shoulder to the slowly fading figure by the counter.  Eyes downcast to the chipped floor, he seemed greyer than he had, a translucent thinness creeping slowly and inexorably through his extremities.  Even the faint hint of ginger in his hair had almost completely turned to ash, and Molly tried not to wonder just how much time he had left. 

There was no point, not really-- sometimes it was an agonizingly slow process as they struggled to release one memory at a time.  Fragments of their lives clutched jealous and close to their chest. Hoarding their pain, instead of coming to terms with it. 

Sometimes it was a rush of feeling, and with sheer force of will they would release their lives and push through.

Usually it was somewhere in between, acceptance coming in aching fits and starts until their souls were light enough to move onto whatever came next.

In the end, they all went.  It was just a matter of time.  Even Mycroft couldn’t escape that human inevitability.

“How did you get it?”  She asked, and watched from the corner of her eye as Mycroft’s gaze flicked up, and away just as fast, “The scar, I mean.  It looks old.” 

Mycroft’s faint sigh of amusement barely rattled the air, dry and thin.  But after a moment he pulled the memory up through the fog that had settled in his mind, recollection blooming strangely bright against the surreality of his present situation.  “It is. I was fifteen, and Sherlock had decided to test the effects of velocity on our mother’s china. It was pale blue, with.. White polka dots on the outside. And tiny rosebuds.  Royal Albert, and my mother loved it.”

It was such a strange thing to remember, a childhood memory etched deep, when everything else was fading away.  

“I can’t… remember.. What he was so furious with her.  But one of his experiments produced more shrapnel than expected.  I …” Mycroft’s voice trailed off for a moment, his fingers steepling against his mouth to press a soft, desolate laugh back behind his lips.  

“Pushed him behind me.  It was all I could think to do at the time.  My brother was both devastated and curious, I don’t think he knew which was more.”  The tip of Mycroft’s tongue darted out, and Molly supposed it was more habit than anything else.  “He wanted to help bandage it. But there was.. Quite a lot of blood, and his fingers kept slipping.  I don’t think he was even scared before that.” 

Even in death, Mycroft found himself pretending the worn floor was fascinating, his once blue gaze tracing over the scarred edges between the tiles.  Maybe it was because it was Molly-- or, more likely, he supposed, because she was the only person that could hear him-- but Mycroft found the words coming more easily than they should have.  Stained with recollection and the bitter sting of his own grief.

He was abandoning his brother.  

Whatever came next, Sherlock would have to face it alone.  There would be no brother to protect him; or sleepy arms to pull him in when the rattling insomnia stalking through his brain became intolerable.  He would never again kiss the nape of his neck while Sherlock hunched over his computer (posture growing worse by the moment as he got caught up in his research), or the tips of of his fingers, smudged black with newsprint.

At the end of August, would he stop and think,  _ “I would have been Mycroft’s birthday today.” _ ?  And the holidays they’d so reluctantly attended would have one less seat at the table.  

The feeling that rose up in his chest felt like suffocation, clenching hard around lungs that didn’t need to breathe any longer.  

And in the simplest human ways, there would be no one to understand him.  Nobody else like him in the world. Sherlock would never forgive him for this.

The shuddering bang at the door to the morgue sliced through the silence, punctuated by the startled clatter of Molly’s scalpel striking the metal table.  She didn’t need to ask, and Mycroft didn’t need to tell her-- there was nobody else it could be, Not else at that hour of the night, and with that hysterical din.  Throwing the institutional blue sheet over his body,  _ his body _ , Molly raced for the door before it could fly open.

The truth would be painful enough without Sherlock seeing it for himself.


	6. Paired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock faces the unimaginable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for sticking with me! Just one more chapter after this, and I hope you're all enjoying it so far!
> 
> And if anyone was interested in a random thing, I wrote the majority of this fic with Ludovico Einaudi's "Nuvole Bianche" on repeat.

Two hours before, Sherlock Holmes was the last person she’d wanted to see.  Of course she knew that something had happened; he could be callous to the point of cruelty, but Molly was fairly sure that she knew Sherlock’s particular brand of nastiness.  And calling her after work, just to make her say _that_?  It wasn’t like him.  Even when he was going to strange extremes for his cases, there was a method to it.

This had sounded desperate.  

Molly didn’t think she’d ever forget the sound of his voice crackling over the line; tinny and hollow like he’d been talking over a speaker.  It wasn’t his casual viciousness (which, she had to credit, he had _better_ about recently) or his blundering, but well meant callousness.  

Of course, it didn’t make it any easier to swallow.  Regardless of the situation, the words had still tasted bitter on her tongue, a vital little piece of her excised to be examined later.  It was, she told herself, alright to hurt. She was allowed to.

It wasn’t, however, right to blame him.  And she didn’t. Not really. He had been the voice on the other end of the line, but it was so very clear that someone else had been pulling his strings.  Someone had used the sharp edge of _I love you_ , as a keen scalpel.  A tool to peel away their layers and see what made them dance.

As much as Molly wanted to know what had happened?  She couldn’t have this conversation now. Not with Mycroft’s body on the table, covered by only the thin layer of a blue sheet.

“Sherlock!  This is a surprise-”  

It wasn’t.

“But it’s really not a good time right now, I’m awfully busy and…”  Molly started as soon as she cracked open the door, her body sliding through the narrow gap in the hopes that he couldn’t see around her. “It’s so late, maybe tomorrow?”  

Now she understood why Greg had lied to him.  And the sick remorse that came with it.

Sherlock looked like-- not death warmed over, that was too on the nose, even for her.  He seemed pulled thin, all his molecules stretched over a frame that wasn’t big enough to hold him.  Straining at the seams, because the fear gnawing away behind his lungs couldn’t ben contained inside his chest, and he felt like he was going to crack.

“No!”  He said, too loudly.  The sharp clip of his voice echoed down the corridor, reverberating against the walls and stopped dead when it reached the stairwell door.  “Molly, _please_. I know there’s something going on.”  He added, the deep baritone of his voice cracking as he pushed towards the door.  He could see the blood on her gloved hands, and the tiny speckles on the cuffs of her otherwise pristinely white jacket.  

Tiny constellations in flecks of blood.  Constellations like freckles.

Sherlock’s rational mind recoiled, rejecting the truth that his animal hind brain had already begun to understand.  If the universe wasn’t lazy enough for coincidence, than there was only one answer that fit all of his facts.

He had never wanted so frantically to be wrong.

 _No,_ it much be coincidence, he was sure-- lazy or not!  This was a morgue, and Molly was a pathologist; surely there were few other professions that left someone in constant contact with various bodily fluids!   _No_ , it was simply his imagination getting away from him.  Running headlong towards the cliff. With shaking hands he gripped the door for leverage, pushing around Molly and grabbing the edge of the frame with his blunt nails.  “My brother won’t answer his bloody phone, and I don’t know.. I don’t _know_ what’s happening.”  Sherlock’s voice strained as he tried to push the door open, the fine muscles in his slender fingers tensed hard against his lack of leverage.

He was slipping.  

She was still leaning against it, her hands behind her back to hold onto the door handle.  

He scrabbled, pushed harder, and heard the squeak of her soft rubber soles against the tile.  “ _Molly!_ Just let me-”

Molly could see the moment his own razor sharp perception offered him enough rope to hang himself.  

“Sherlock, please, you don’t need to--”  She started quietly and dug her heels into the ground, trying to buy a little purchase on the worn smooth tiles.  What was she supposed to say? The body in there isn’t your brother anymore? There’s nothing you can do to change this?  That even the great Sherlock Holmes couldn’t always stop death, just like he hadn’t been able to save Mary?

With every person that died for him, Sherlock’s life was given a heavier burden of worth; weighed against the knowledge that they’d consciously decided that his life had more value than their own.  

Sherlock’s hands were white knuckled on the door, and with his muscles straining across his shoulders, he pushed it open-- Molly and all.  There was no way to stop him, and with her heart in her throat, Molly watched as he stormed across the lab and threw the blue sheet away from his brother’s face.

And howled.

It was sound she would never forget.  From the doorway, Molly watched as Sherlock fell over his brother’s body, his beautiful fingers tangled in Mycroft’s auburn hair.  With a broken, animal noise of grief, Sherlock pulled his brother up against his heaving chest, pressing him hard to his heart and willed the life of it to spill over into him.

He’d known he was bleeding out and there was the wound; it was cold and stiff with rigor mortis, the Y-shaped incision on his chest staining Sherlock’s purple, buttoned down shirt.  The confirmation of the one thing he’d refused to let himself consider, even when it had haunted him away from Baker Street.

Beneath the antiseptic burnt of the morgue, Sherlock could still smell the grapefruit and cedar of his brother’s cologne, elegant and refined.  He could picture the small glass bottle, with the red seal and deep blue ribbon on the neck; half full and waiting to be splashed on in the morning.  Now it would collect dust.

It smelled like Mycroft.  Of the blue scarf he’d stolen from his brother’s hat rack one cold night, and pressed to his face as he returned to Baker Street, aching to throw off their charade and curl back into the warmth of Mycroft’s bed.  Instead, he had buried his nose in the fine cashmere wool and inhaled the scent memory of him.

Now it would fade, too.

“He can’t see me.”  Molly looked over as Mycroft’s voice rustled, dry in the cold air.  There was no sound in his movement as he leaned against his brother’s back, and Sherlock’s black curls didn’t ruffle when he passed his translucent fingers across them.  Proprietary and adoring.

 _My Sherlock_. Who couldn’t feel his hands on his shoulders, trying to pull him away from the ghastly, blue-lipped corpse.

Molly shook her head, no.  He couldn’t. And even if Mycroft had the words to ease his pain, Sherlock wouldn’t be able to hear him.  The window had closed on their chance to speak, and if there were words left unsaid? (as there always was) They would remain unsaid.  That was the nature of it.

In the morning, Sherlock would have to face the unimaginable -- the first day of his new normal.  Molly wanted to tell him that it would be alright, but even she didn’t believe it. Not really. Some things never really were.

And since Mycroft couldn’t hold his brother, Molly did instead.   
  



	7. Sinister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the beginning meets the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we go, my lovelies! One last chapter to tie everything up. 
> 
> I do have a couple of one-shot ideas for this verse, but we'll have to see how they pan out! 
> 
> But you don't need to hear me rambling, so on to the epilogue!

“Where do you think we went wrong?  He’s so very predictable.” Eurus’ voice echoed tinnily over the speakers, curiously devoid of mocking.  She wasn’t seeking leverage or power; Sherlock had been right, they were nothing more than lab rats, scurrying through the maze of her design.  Whether they lived or died wasn’t a matter of talent or brilliance, they couldn’t will themselves into a better position because it simply  _ didn’t exist _ .

With a dense slap, meat on cement, Dr. Watson had struck the floor, his head turned at a sickening angle that narrowly avoided being fatal.  A few more inches, and things might have been very different. Even Eurus Holmes couldn’t predict everything... 

He hoped.

Crouched, pathetic, on the cold concrete, Mycroft cradled his brother’s head against his chest.  He tried to ignore the bruised ache of of his knees where they’d struck the floor in his haste, catching his brother against his heart before he could complete his boneless slump to the ground.  He’d been just fast enough, barely, but Mycroft wasn’t going to reject any small mercies in this hellish place.

He could feel the prickling pain of the dart in his neck, the fletched end quivering with every heavy thud of his heart.  Measuring out the beats, until he brushed it away with the back of his hand, and tried not to think about what might have been on it.

He was still conscious.  Obviously it wasn’t the same cocktail that had been prepared for Sherlock and John; but Mycroft couldn’t begin to fathom why.  Somehow, he doubted he was going to like the answer.

“What have you done to them?”  He demanded, his careful fingers finding the hair fine base of the other dart and pulling it free of his brother’s neck.  With one eye on the screen, Mycroft wafted the dart under his nose; no scent, no colour. Nothing to give him even the smallest fragment of a clue as to what they were dealing with.  

Somehow, he couldn’t even manage to be properly surprised -- Eurus’ whole rat maze had been too meticulously planned for her to tip her hand on an obvious oversight.

So many years protecting the world from his sister.

His sister from the world.

And in the end, all it had done was furnish her with a lifetime to plot her revenge.  There was no-one to blame, save for himself, for that. 

Under his hand, Mycroft could feel the frantic trip of his brother’s heart as it raced hard against his ribs.  How many times had he felt that? Sherlock’s fingers threaded through his own and pressing the flat of his palm to his chest,  _ “See what you do to me, Mycie?”   _ He would whisper against his ear.

See what he’d done now.  

See his mistake in every laboured breath that forced its’ way through his brother’s slack lips?     
Hear the gummy rattle in his own chest, promising the quick-acting  _ something _ their sister had prepared for them.

The rasp of their breathing seemed to fall in time with the thoughtful hum from the speakers, reminding Mycroft that they still had a curious audience.  “What have you done, Eurus?” Mycroft hissed for a second time, his fingers splayed protectively over Sherlock’s faltering chest.

“You mean you can’t figure it out?  I suppose Sherlock _ is _ the chemist… I’m sure he could have solved it in a moment.”  Eurus sounded vaguely put-out, her slender fingers tap-tapping away at her chapped mouth.  “We’re going to play a game, Mycroft. You were so busy when we were children, with your studies and your ambitions.  But you taught me to play chess, do you remember? You thought it would give me something to apply my mind to. Something organized.”

“I remember.”  Mycroft felt like he would choke on the words, but with a shudder and the taste of copper he managed to force them through his teeth.  They’d both inherited their mother’s eyes, the same shades of blue meeting through the medium of the digital screens. “But I fail to see how this has even the barest resemblance to chess.”

“No?  Oh… I’ve isolated your pawns.  Annexed your knight. And with a little cyanide-- I thought you’d appreciate the classic touch-- I’ve left the king and queen at risk.  I have one vial of the antidote, Mycroft. And you’re in check. Do you sacrifice your king and forfeit the game on your own terms? You’ve always enjoyed playing the most powerful piece on the board, brother.  The person pulling the strings.’

“Or do you sacrifice the queen?  And hope the king, a knight, and a handful of pawns are powerful enough to change the game?  I told you, only two go on from here.”

She had anticipated all of this, right down to her feigned panic when Sherlock had held the gun to his own head.  This had all been to her plan, and they had danced and danced to the tune that she’d composed. 

“There’s one syringe, Mycroft.  On the shelf on the back wall. You should hurry, you really haven’t got much time, and Sherlock is sounding very poorly.  How much longer do you think he can last without a proper breath? Of course, you could always take it yourself... ‘

“Do you think you could bury him again, big brother?  If you knew, this time, he wouldn’t come back?”

It was a small mercy, he supposed, that Sherlock wouldn’t remember any of this.  But there would be no goodbye, no parting words, or chance to explain. 

Mycroft pressed the pad of his thumb hard against the solid band around his finger; and weighed the syringe of pale, milky Sulfanegen in the other hand.  A reminder, Sherlock had told him, when they were still young and bitter at every moment they had to spend apart. An  _ ‘I love you’ _ he never had to question, and could never forget because it was wrapped around his finger.  After eighteen years it was scuffed and scraped, the surface no longer as shiny as it had once been.

But it had endured, just like them.  Scars and all.

As the antidote slipped into Sherlock’s veins, Mycroft’s world greyed at the edges.  The cyanide had infected every drop of blood, rushing through his veins and shutting him down.  Maybe Eurus had anticipated this as well… But he didn’t care to ask.

Mycroft’s last ‘I love you’ was whispered against the depression of Sherlock’s temple, both brothers sinking down to the cold cement floor.  For his ears alone, even if he couldn’t hear him.

Whatever happened next, Mycroft thought, he had done his best.  He had tried.

“Do you think it’s going to be enough, Mycroft?  Sacrificing the Queen to spare the King?”

He hoped so.

But Sherlock would never forgive him.


End file.
